Location: Hall of Echoing Light – Beneath Hogwarts
Time: September 28, 1:34 AM
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The door closed behind them like a breath being held.
No latch. No handle.
No going back.
Inside, the Hall was… alive.
Not in the way classrooms are alive, full of sound and youth and movement. The Hall of Echoing Light breathed through memory. Every step they took sent shimmers through the air, like their presence was being written and rewritten, over and over, into invisible parchment.
The walls were not walls. They were layers of old light — spells caught in static time, shifting like reflections in glass.
Dara whispered, "This isn't a vault."
Lyra touched one. It pulsed softly and pulled away — like silk slipping through water.
"It's a memory field."
"No," Elias said. "It's worse than that."
He pointed to the far end of the chamber, where a stone pedestal hovered above nothing — suspended by threads of glowing air. On it sat a book made of metal, chained closed with runes burned in flame.
Behind it, a giant silver mirror stood at an angle — but it didn't reflect them.
It reflected versions of them.
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In the mirror, Lyra stood taller, glowing with gold veins, casting without a wand and commanding air like song.
Elias wore armor shaped like bone, bearing the Circle mark—but cracked through with rebellion.
Dara floated inches off the floor, her body ringed in luminous script, holding a broken shard of time.
The mirror shimmered — then spoke.
"You are not the first."
"You are not the last."
"But you are the first to come together."
The runes on the metal book began to unravel.
Dara held up her shard — it glowed brighter than ever. A piece of the book responded, unlocking with a hiss of steam and starlight.
The Hall shivered.
And then the whispers began.
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Thousands of voices.
Children.
Crying. Laughing. Chanting spells in lost languages.
Their voices swirled together, forming one sentence over and over:
"They took our names."
"They took our names."
"They took our names."
Lyra stepped forward. "Who?"
The air cracked.
From the center of the room, a new projection formed — not of them, but of three others:
• A child with silver eyes and threads bleeding from her fingers.
• A boy holding a staff made of memory wood, branded with the Circle sigil.
• A girl with flame-hair and glass runes embedded in her chest.
Dara staggered.
"Those are the first."
"The original Threadbearers."
Elias looked at the metal book.
The final lock broke.
The title seared itself into the cover — visible now, as if alive:
"Wandbound Codex: Vol I — The Erased Lineage"
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Suddenly, the entire Hall darkened.
Not with shadow.
With interference.
Like something outside had noticed them. Something ancient, hungry, and furious.
The mirror cracked slightly.
And a whisper — different from the others — cut through the Hall like a curse:
"You were warned."
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Lyra turned.
Elias grabbed her arm.
Dara's shard began to spin uncontrollably.
"Someone's trying to shut the Hall down," she shouted. "From outside!"
"They're deploying a seal—"
The air around them began to collapse — folding the Hall into itself, pulling the threads away—
And then a light appeared.
A wand.
Held by someone bursting through the collapsing threshold.
"GET OUT OF THE FIELD!"
Hermione Granger had arrived.